It's hard to gauge the extent of anger among freedom l0ving Americans over the passage, in both the House and Senate, of bills amending FISA that expand the ability of Our government to perform surveillance on U.S. citizens without obtaining a warrant. One can observe the usual gnashing of teeth, name-calling, and other expressions of disgust on all the usual anti-authoritarian blog sites. Makes me wonder if I'm seeing a pattern here:
We get the bad news.
We wail and clench our fists.
We write brilliant exposes and prescriptions.
And then we settle back down to wait for the next offense by the Bush White House (backed up by a statist/corporatist-stacked Judiciary) and our feckless Congress.
Now, this patter-n of ours is not necessarily as useless as it may appear, and we can look upon this behavior with affection and hope. If each episode raises the temperature of the burn, eventually a critical mass of energy will combust, possibly resulting in - oh, I don't know - action, maybe?
What we are witnessing then, is the continuing gestation of We the People's organic and intrinsic resistance to the gradual imposition of State oppression.
A place to discuss concrete ways to restore our nation's ideals, as described in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America.
The promise of the United States,
its vision and ideals, as set forth in its founding documents (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America) are best understood as "works in progress." The United States' failure throughout its history to live up to the lofty standards codified in those founding documents in no way lessens their meaning, nor their value. The good that the United States has in fact achieved since 1776 has served to reinforce the idea of a country striving, by design, to be better than its all-too-human and very imperfect nature. Most important, those ideals exist as real, true things that We, the People can achieve. It's the hopeful intent of this site to discuss and facilitate ways of actually achieving our nation, and thereby continue to form, as the Constitution exhorts, a more perfect union.
Recommended Reading
Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman
A New Declaration Of Independence 2007
by Ron McCallie
The American Police State (Random House - 1976)
by David Wise
by Walt Whitman
A New Declaration Of Independence 2007
by Ron McCallie
The American Police State (Random House - 1976)
by David Wise
Resource Library
- * The Declaration of Independence
- * The Constitution of the United States of America
- * The Electronic Frontier Foundation
- * ACLU
- * SourceWatch
- * McClatchy Newspapers' DC Bureau "Truth to Power"
- * OpEdNews.com
- * Media Matters for America
- * ColorOfChange
- * How To Write A Letter To The Editor - by Dave Romm
- * The Authoritarians - by Dr. Bob Altemeyer
Patriot Blogs
Please page back through the archives...
to view The Voters' Platform, a bill of particulars by the people, for the people. Add your ideas, arguments, and questions by posting to the comments link, after which they'll be transcribed to the main page, and eventually forwarded to political candidates.
to view The Voters' Platform, a bill of particulars by the people, for the people. Add your ideas, arguments, and questions by posting to the comments link, after which they'll be transcribed to the main page, and eventually forwarded to political candidates.
While You Were Out...
Here's a little message pad, courtesy of Posse Comment@US to keep track of your calls.
The title ''Achieving Our Country''
is drawn from the famous last sentence of James Baldwin's ''Fire Next Time.'' There, Baldwin called on the saving remnant, ''the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks,'' to ''end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world.'' The point of invoking James Baldwin, of course, is that he was entirely unforgiving of his country's sins and still looked forward with hope to a better future. A left that fights for the political and economic changes that will ''achieve our country'' is the left that the United States once possessed and needs as much as ever, but is hardly to be seen.
--from a book review: "The New New Left"
by Alan Ryan
--from a book review: "The New New Left"
by Alan Ryan
BLACK FLAG WEEK BLOGROLL of sites participating in acts of solidarity with the people of Pakistan
- * Blawgletter®
- * Org Legal
- * First Amendment Law Prof Blog
- * Human Rights Commission of Pakistan
- * Wise Law Blog
- * Fast Rising
- * University of Alberta Law faculty Blog
- * Teeth Maestro
- * Nasi Khan blog
- * Chapati Mystery
- * United4justice's Weblog
- * Feminist Law Professors
- * The Chocolate Interrobang
- * Dick Jones' Patteran Pages
- * Bread Crumbs
- * Lyssa-Strada
- * Wilson's Blogmanac
- * Maryannaville
- * skippy the bush kangaroo
- * Home of the Brave
BLACK FLAG WEEK RESOURCES
Contributors
1 comment:
Hey, Gordon...
In reply to your response (to ondelette's reply to mine) at GG's blog, I'd like to suggest that we do something organized like come up with a "voters' platform."
You could start a new post for it, allowing people to comment, and then update the post with the comments as needed. [You can also keep moving the post up to the top of the page.]
In the past, the "party" would always come up with the "platform." However, things have already changed by a few degrees, and there is more back-and-forth between candidates (Democrats anyway) and voters. Why not in this, too?
Also, I don't think it should be a few people deciding on the planks, but maybe when it's time to synthesize the text. Otherwise, the more the merrier.
Instead, brainstorm first-- online, perhaps with a list of suggestions, but also asking for free-text suggestions, just to indicate any interest in a topic/issue. Once there is a critical mass, have someone or ones refine the list, and then invite people to vote on them in some way, either individually on some kind of scale, or else by prioritizing them. (I would prefer the former over the latter.)
That's where it gets more complicated. Do you try to limit people to one response, etc., and how do you do that.
But, maybe by then, some other group who knows how to administer such surveys would step into help.
What do you think?
[Tops on my list is restoring the Constitution.]
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